German Patent 30 50 102 describes a sorting plant: an endless cart chain circulates on a closed rail that forms a loop. Each cart of this chain has a receptacle that can be tilted about a slanted axis from its horizontal starting position into two tilting positions. Several loading stations at which the unit load is loaded into the receptacles and several target stations are assigned to the cart into which the unit load is loaded at the loading station. Once the cart reaches the target station, a horizontal rail is transversely displaced, so that it presses against the outer periphery of a rotating disk arranged on the cart. This results in the disk turning and thus the tilting of the receptacle into one of its two tilting positions, so that the unit load is unloaded at the target station.
However, if many target stations have to be serviced, this type of sorting plant is not reasonably utilized because a larger number of unoccupied carts must travel over extensive distances.